


Vision of Unclean Beasts

by ARoadInCapeCod



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Children, Churches & Cathedrals, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Existence, F/M, Feels, Ficlet, Gen, Headcanon, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, MSR, Male-Female Friendship, Nothing Important Happened Today, One Shot, Partnership, Post-Episode: Existence, Prayer, Pre-Episode: Nothing Important Happened Today, Pre-X-Files Revival, Religion, Season 8, Season 9, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6337543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARoadInCapeCod/pseuds/ARoadInCapeCod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This scene is set in-between seasons eight and nine. Here, we find Scully at church, Mulder is gone and with seemingly normal baby William at home.. Written in part for @leiascully’s X-Files Writing Challenge prompt: For Better or For Worse aka life on the road, wife-gate, good apartments, bad motels, happy days and sad ones. I chose a sad day with lots of internal exposition and symbolism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vision of Unclean Beasts

St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church  
Arlington, Virginia  
2:42 PM

The aisles? Practically empty. God only speaks to a few visitors on Thursday afternoons, it seems.

Her heels clicked with every step against the long, silver-coated marble floor; suddenly, afraid she’s too loud for this intensely quiet place.

The all-familiar transept welcomed her. She sat in the nave in one of the pews near the illuminated altar, about three rows - close, but not imposingly so. The pipe organ, tucked away in the left corner, always so hearty and throaty whenever the organist played. Scully wished there was someone here to play it now - the music would be a grand distraction from the dizzying array of thoughts that rattled that inside of her mind.

She inhales deeply and gazes from the left corner, to the right corner, to her side. Continually, she battles away a sense of dread that she hopes she keeps at bay on her face.

However, today, like many days, she half expects a figure to emerge from the shadows and ask her, “Why are you here?” Or another figure would appear only to declare that he has been following her for a long, long time.

She inhales and exhales once again, attempting to find peace, by the sight of the slow, flickering glow of candles at the altar.

She steadies her breathing, as if it is the only thing she knows how to do. She is pleased that she picked this day for prayer. The building’s almost-emptiness speaks to her like nothing else can.

Internally - everything - Scully knows could be much worse. She hopes that the small, silver cross around her neck still harbors the power to save her, to give her the faith she so desperatly needs.

Her mind dashes back inside itself again, to the grey and black holes of uncertainty. She knows, there’s something else in the air - something all too evil.

She finds herself not in the mood to exchange pleasantries with her fellow worshippers, guests, religious believers and others. Sometimes, on off days, when she’s here she spies someone she’s talked with on Sunday mornings or afternoons. Or, on others, she is at the beck and call of her of her mother who begs her daughter to come at talk to this person or that one. Scully does not have the heart to tell her mother she wants nothing more than to be back at home.

Her weekly visits to church on Sunday have become fewer and fewer but she needs this. She’s scaring herself. The inside of the church to is a grand salvation but it is not her only one.

For now, however, it works. These days her time at church is less about her and more about him. 

The altar, remains a steady forms of visitation. Always, her eyes stand mesmerized by the blue-green stained-glass windows. The intense colors of the painting, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, delight her eyes for a brief moment. St. Anne and Mary gaze down at a happy infant Christ that yearns for the baby lamb to his left - little does the infant know is that he is the sacrificial lamb. St. Anne is beautiful in her blue-white gown, the patron saint of mothers and children. The saint’s patronage now offers Scully more meaning and more comfort than ever before - a blissful, fleeting speck of hope.

Scully reaches inside her blazer pocket and extracts a rosary - a small string of prayer beads with a bold cross at the end, every fifth bead larger than the rest. She gathers the beads in her hand, caressing the circles and cross lightly with her fingers. The item feels uncertain, like a foreign body pressing inside her already familiar self.

Perhaps, in another life, if she were the believer, the Virgin herself would appear to her in a vision and present her with her own carefully crafted chaplet of beads - her own crown of roses.

Oh, how she knew her partner would believe such a thing would be possible. Alas, he was not here to comfort her and Scully could no longer count on his words. His words had once acted as her personal bard as he would always be the one to tell her the poetic stories of the origins of everything and of everyone.

At last, her eyes close and are instantly wet with moisture. Before she could stop the tears from falling, her stomach drops, realizing she’s forgotten a tissue. 

A tear falls, then another, and another - one for her, for Mulder, for William.

A little something for all three of them.


End file.
